November 15, 2006 - Lovers Key State Park, FL   

Might as well start getting caught up, eh?

Naw, I'm not asleep........ she just caught me when I was blinking.  Yeah, right.  I obviously was NOT updating the website.  Just enjoying Clermont, Florida, before heading down the 200+ miles south to Lovers Key for our winter volunteer jobs.

And since we're so close, why not drop in to inspect the 8,000 square foot woodworking shop at The Villages, where we hope to buy a home once we sell the Road Abode.  These folks are in the carving room, and we had access to them.  Some amateurs learning the art, and some others who were accomplished magicians.  Amazing things in here.

Since entry to the "real" shop is limited to those who live in The Villages and have taken and passed the safety course, we had to take these pictures through the window.  What fun to think I may have this available to me in the future!  I love to make sawdust, shavings, and chips.  They even have a storage area outside for larger projects, like say, a 16' Center Console Skiff.  Hummmmmmm.

Ever heard of Martin Luther?  The Christian reformer?  Well, here's his Bible.  Printed in 1652.  It's proudly displayed at the Florida branch of the Wycliffe Bible Translators.  Jim and Dayna were kind enough to repeat their earlier tour to help us find the place.  Besides, they're fun people to hang out with.

When Wycliffe obtained the property, it had a natural spring which only needed a small amount of encouragement to form this little lake - without any 'gators!  Nice fountain, and very peaceful setting right next to Orlando.  The "painting" was actually made by the artist daubing a finger into some ink with varying degrees of intensity, and them making a finger print on the canvass.  Amazing piece of work with many folk's fingerprints.

Wonderful gifts and sculptures all over the facility depicting the people who have no access to the Bible in their native tongue.

The "Tree of Life" shows some of the missionaries in different parts of the world, all being supported by the root system of people praying for them.

We were appreciative of the artist's depiction of all the different people in different attitudes of prayer.  Some obviously quiet and introspective, others physically active and joyously praising our Lord.  Something for everybody.

Naturally, loving boats like I do, I was drawn to this model.  Actually, I think Barb was kind enough to point it out to me.

Sometimes is seems as if the world is actually run by volunteers.  Or at least it seems that way to us.  Maybe because we get such a kick out of volunteering ourselves.  These ladies were putting together some kind of mailing as I recall.

If you look closely, you can actually read these books.  Difficult, but still.......

Jim, Dayna, our tour guide and the two of us.  We enjoyed the tour and meeting several of the volunteers while we were there.  Great bunch of people.

They have quite a RV park for seasonal volunteers as well.  Since this was early September, it was still a tad warm for most snowbirds, and there was plenty of room for volunteers.  We were told it will fill up before "the season" really gets going.

From big-time high tech, to some pretty basic natural stuff.  We watched the launch of one of the shuttles from Cape Canaveral on its way to the space station while staying home.  Couldn't hear it, but there was no missing it.

That's a gopher tortoise Barb's holding.  Not sure it's "legal" to pick up the wildlife, but you know Barb......... she's drawn to anything smaller than she is!

Bunch of the little guys must have recently hatched, as in addition to the one Barb picked up, we found a few others.  The one in the grass is the one Barb used to be holding, and then a brave one crossing the road.  And luckily for him, those skid marks were not made because of him.

And he made it! Back into the tall (for him) grass, just like it knew what it was doing.

There's a bit of a story here:

We had a couple look at the coach, and they were serious buyers.  He seemed to want to buy our coach on the spot, she was holding out for a new one.  They had zero RV experience, and we encouraged them to at least buy a used one, even if it wasn't ours, because it's almost always good to try something used (and lose less money if it doesn't work for you) than it is to take the high depreciation of a new coach, only to find out it's not going to work for you.  Since we didn't hear from them again, we assumed the Mrs. got her wish. :-)

After the couple left, we got to thinking about our storage locker in the NW and decided that it would be a lot more fun to drive the coach to the Seattle area and retrieve the few personal belongings we had in storage there than it would be to do the same thing in the Jeep.  Sleeping in motels and eating fast food going back and forth across the country twice is not our idea of a fun trip.  So, we decided to wait for a couple of days for our mail to catch up with us and we'd leave.

While we were waiting, Barb woke me up about 2AM and told me my computer was beeping or my little alarm clock (that sits on my "desk") had gone off, and I needed to go shut it off.  Turned out it was neither of these, but rather the low air-pressure alarm for our suspension and braking system.  Interesting, since the keys were laying on the dash, and the only time that alarm will sound is when the keys are turned on and the engine hasn't built enough air pressure for moving the coach.  With flashlight firmly in hand, I ventured outside and disconnected a wire that I thought might shut things down.  It did, and back to bed we went.

Next day I called James at Foretravel (another good reason to own a Foretravel rather than a competitive brand) and he made some suggestions.  After a day of poking around, I found a bunch of fried wires.  Any one of which could prevent the coach from moving.  After pouring over the schematics that come with every Foretravel and several more calls to the factory for advice, I crawled into the engine bay and went to work.  It wasn't exactly cool, clean, and pleasant.  But it was darn sure less expensive than paying somebody $90 an hour to do the same thing!!  I was obviously surprised by Barb's camera.

  AHA!  The culprit has been found!  Well, at least the results of the culprit, which was a frozen (bearings shot) fan motor for the dash A/C unit.  We decided we could live without dash air until we got back to the factory on our return trip from Seattle.  I ended up replacing about 6' of wire so we could run the engine and have all the gauges working, etc., but left the fan and its wiring to the experts in Nacogdoches, TX.  Is this a great lifestyle or what?????

Home  Journal Contents  Previous Page  Next Page